2004: Some college dudes unveil a website only Harvard University people can use. Seven years later it is worth $50 billion, and for hundreds of millions of people the site now called Facebook is so integral to daily life that, for all intents and purposes, it is the internet. Trying to remember a time before […]

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Feb 4, 2004: You’ve Got a ‘Friend’ in TheFacebook

2004: Some college dudes unveil a website only Harvard University people can use. Seven years later it is worth $50 billion, and for hundreds of millions of people the site now called Facebook is so integral to daily life that, for all intents and purposes, it is the internet.

Trying to remember a time before Facebook? If you are in your 20s — like co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and the handful of college buddies who dreamed it up — that might be impossible. But even if you are in your 50s it’s a tad difficult to recall what the pre-Facebook world was like, even if you are only slightly digi-literate. Heck, even Betty White has heard of it.

So, consider: Friendster was the social media leader in early 2004. Google was still months away from an IPO which would revitalize the tech sector after the painful dot-com bust at the end of the previous millennium.

YouTube was still a year away. And Twitter, which has created something of a revolution of its own, would have been borderline indescribable.

None of that mattered to a driven young(er) Zuckerberg, whose innovative ethic (whether he believes it or not), is paid homage in The Social Network, the multiple–Oscar-nominated film that is must-viewing for any student of innovation, media disruption and Silicon Valley values.

And then there are the lawsuits, since success has many parents.
Zuckerberg, as the The Social Network famously depicted, was sued by shunned former partner Eduardo Saverin and by fellow Harvard undergrads Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who enlisted him to create a social network they would call “HarvardConnection.”

The film “Zuckerberg” says to the pair he calls “the Winklevii”: “If you had created Facebook, you would have created Facebook.” The real Zuckerberg may not have said that, but as Wired magazine’s Fred Vogelstein argues, Facebook is much more than a single lightbulb over the right head.

“I don’t know if Zuckerberg stole the idea behind Facebook from the Winklevosses. I don’t know if he cheated Eduardo Saverin. What I do know is that it doesn’t matter. They didn’t build the company, Zuckerberg did, and in Silicon Valley, at least, that’s all that matters,” Vogelstein wrote in an Epicenter essay shortly after The Social Network opened last year.

“Remember three years ago when Yahoo tried to buy Facebook for $1 billion and Zuckerberg said no? Remember four years ago when he launched ‘newsfeed’ and again said no when outraged users and a few employees told him to shut it down?” Vogelstein said. “Gutsy decisions like that are why Facebook and Zuckerberg are where they are today, not because of who had what idea first.”

Indeed, the concept of a social network wasn’t even new. Zuckerberg had a profile on Friendster (see above). As Facebook grew, the dominant player became MySpace. What wasn’t new was the notion of exclusivity: a private, virtual, restricted social network.

For about 2½ years Facebook — which dropped the The in 2005 when the company was able to buy the domain facebook.com for $200,000 — was a purely academic club, albeit to an increasing pool of colleges, schools and universities. But the universe of undergrads, even the world over, is static — and small. To be really big, you have to be bigger.

The irony, of course, is that Facebook gained early currency by excluding the world at large but became a global sensation only by reversing course and opening up to anyone with a legitimate e-mail address — which is anyone. Astonishingly, when Facebook allowed mom and dad in, the cool kids didn’t bolt. Instead, they bolted from MySpace.

Will Facebook still be the dominant force in social networking in another seven years?

Facebook isn’t just one good idea that someone else can do better — how Google succeeded Yahoo. But history is unkind to companies. None dominate for very long in the grand scheme of things, except those which dominate in industries that themselves become irrelevant.

Facebook’s future is likely to depend as much on how much we want to continue sharing as on how the firm continues to execute. But one thing seems clear: It is highly unlikely that any company which depends entirely on the kindness of strangers will be as successful as this one any time soon.